Peasant Maids-City Women

In Peasant Maids--City Women, a truly intercultural project, a team of historians follows several groups of women from rural Europe to the bustling streets of Chicago. Focusing on Germans, Irish, Swedes, and Poles--the four largest foreign-born ethnic groups in the city around 1900--the authors analyze the origins of the immigrants and chart how their lives changed, and explore how immigrant women shaped the urbanization process, creating vibrant public spheres for ethnic expression.